Fact: School Budgets Are Dwindling – What Does It Mean?
According to research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, total school spending per pupil in England fell by about 8 per cent in real terms between 2009-10 and 2017-18. In Wales, it fell by about 5 per cent over the same period.
The reason for higher cuts in England was driven by a combination of a greater fall in spending by local authorities and school sixth form spending alongside faster growth in pupil numbers.
Now that the festive season has passed, a hot topic over the internet and social media is that of the school Christmas nativity. Is the tradition still relevant, and who really benefits from maintaining it?
The nativity play remains a long-standing tradition in several schools up and down the country. For many, it’s something to look forward to with great anticipation and excitement. But for others, it is yet another major school project that has the potential to take up a lot of precious time.
On a day-to-day basis, most teachers will witness children misbehaving or being somewhat cruel to each other. But thankfully, there’s an innate kindness in everyone, which simply needs a little bit of classroom cultivation.
Famed naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin believed that kindness was one of the strongest instincts in humans stating, “those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.”
The amount of data today’s society produces is absolutely astonishing. Every day, there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created, which is only accelerating with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). What’s more, 90 per cent of the data in the world that exists today was generated in the last two years alone.
In terms of electronic communication, 156 million emails are sent every minute, of which 66 per cent is spam. When you throw phone calls, text messages, social media notifications into the mix, its easy to get completely overwhelmed when trying to manage your email inbox at school.
Despite the fact that many teachers believe marking is necessary to provide children with valuable feedback and help them improve in the future, Ofsted doesn’t share the same sentiment.
In a myth-busting factsheet, Ofsted said it “does not expect to see any specific frequency, type or volume of marking and feedback; these are for the school to decide through its assessment policy.”
In other words, as long as schools get the required results out of students, marking isn’t absolutely essential.
According to the National Literacy Trust, 3 in 5 children in the UK enjoy reading, which is an all-time-high. This will come as good news for teachers, as the longer children maintain an enjoyment of reading, the greater the benefits are in the classroom.
In fact, 10-year-olds who enjoy reading have a reading age 1.3 years higher than their peers who do not enjoy reading, which rises to 2.1 years for 12-year-olds and 3.3 years for 14-year-olds.
According to a report by Public Health England, there is a clear link between health, wellbeing, and educational attainment. Happier children work better, have less time off school, achieve higher grades, and are generally more successful.
Therefore, it is in every teacher’s best interests to create a happy classroom. Student happiness doesn’t detract from ‘serious’ learning either, as evidence shows that those with a greater sense of wellbeing also do better academically and are better behaved.
Most teachers probably feel like they’ve got a million and one different relationships to manage at the same time. But even if you get on well with your colleagues and have established a strong bond with pupils, that doesn’t mean to say relationships between you and parents will be just as rosy.
The secret to building good relationships with parents and guardians is actually quite simple – communication. By reaching out to parents and guardians early on in the school year, they will feel much more comfortable and confident that their children are in good hands.
According to the Oxford Language Report, which surveyed more than 1,300 teachers across the country, the significant word gap in UK schools is holding back children’s learning.
Over half of those surveyed reported that at least 40 per cent of their pupils lacked the vocabulary needed to access their learning. Worryingly, 69 per cent of primary school teachers and 60 per cent of secondary school teachers believe the gap is increasing.
As a teacher, your day-to-day responsibilities include more than just ticking off items on the curriculum. Along with giving your students the tools and techniques to learn effectively, you’ll also be dictating their behaviour, shaping their minds, and influencing future decisions.
In fact, school children who receive words of encouragement from a teacher are significantly more likely to continue their education beyond the age of 16 than those who do not according to a study by the University of Cambridge.